Robert Derwent Garth Forster (born 29 June 1957) is an Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist and music critic. In December 1977 he co-founded an indie rock group, The Go-Betweens, with fellow musician, Grant McLennan. In 1980 Lindy Morrison joined the group on drums and backing vocals and by 1981 Forster and Morrison were also lovers. In 1988, "Streets of Your Town", co-written by McLennan and Forster, became the band's biggest chart hit in both Australia and the United Kingdom. The follow-up single, "Was There Anything I Could Do?", was a No. 16 hit on the BillboardModern Rock Tracks chart in the United States. In December 1989, after recording six albums, The Go-Betweens disbanded. Forster and Morrison had separated as a couple earlier and Forster began his solo music career from 1990.

In May 1978 Forster's first recorded work was the group's debut single, "Lee Remick", which appeared in September.[6][8] It was a paean to the Hollywood actress of the same name.[5] Forster later recalled "I didn't have a girlfriend or any sort of romantic side to my life ... I wanted to write a love song. But who was I in love with? No-one. I had to find someone and I found Lee Remick".[5] He also wrote the B-side, "Karen", as an ode to the university's library staff, "[t]here was kindness in the library, then you walk out of the library into the harsh real world".[5][9] Forster then wrote their second single, "People Say".[10] According to Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, both singles were "sparsely produced, poorly played yet passionately performed folksy, post-punk pop songs. They were sunny, catchy and hopelessly romantic, earning the band immediate local and international acclaim".[6]

In November 1979 The Go-Betweens relocated to London, they re-released their early material and followed with another single, "I Need Two Heads", also written by Forster.[6][11] It peaked at No. 6 on the United Kingdom Independent Charts.[6] The group remained in UK for almost a year but ran out of money and needed a drummer, so they returned to Brisbane.[12] By November 1980 Lindy Morrison (ex-Xero) had joined the group on drums and backing vocals.[6][7][12] By 1981 Forster and Morrison were also lovers, she later remembered "Robert never took part in any group discussions ... He would not stay in the house if there were other people present ... he and I would have cups of tea on the verandah and debate the place of politics in art".[5]

After the disbandment of The Go-Betweens, Forster relocated to Germany in 1990 and recorded his debut solo album, Danger in the Past, in Berlin.[15][16] It was produced by Harvey (Anita Lane) and issued on Beggars Banquet Records.[4][15]Allmusic's Ned Raggett found the album showed "literate, understated rock & roll" with his "gently cracked, high vocals" and "setting and maintaining a variety of moods from sudden energy to soft rumination".[16] In November he issued a single, "Baby Stones", from the album.[15] Also that year he provided guitar for German pop group Baby You Know's debut album, To Live Is to Fly.[4][17] Karin Bäumler featured on violin and vocals on To Live Is to Fly.[17] Bäumler also provided vocals for Forster's Danger in the Past.[16] Forster and Bäumler married in the early 1990s.[5][18]

By 1993 Forster had returned to Brisbane to record his second solo album, Calling from a Country Phone, at Sunshine Studios with members of local pop group, Custard.[4][15] It was produced by Forster and issued on Shock Records and Beggars Banquet in June.[4][15] A single, "Drop", had appeared a month ahead of the album.[15] For touring he formed Robert Forster's Silver Backwash with David McCormack on guitar, Robert Moore on bass guitar and Glenn Thompson on drums.[4][15] Although described as a "bustling country-pop" album by McFarlane,[15] according to Allmusic's Greg Adams its "folk-rock sound ... recalls Felt's Me and a Monkey on the Moon more than ... Nashville".[19] Forster also produced his third solo album, I Had a New York Girlfriend, which is a collection of cover versions recorded in Melbourne in 1994.[4][15] Raggett felt it was "an interesting and at times defiantly anti-hip visit through a surprising, entertaining selection of songs".[20]

By 1995 Forster had formed a three-piece group, Warm Nights, with Thompson and Adele Pickvance on bass guitar.[21] Late that year Forster and McLennan performed together in Brisbane and the duo were accompanied by Pickvance and Thompson.[21] Forster denied it was a tribute show: "anyone that did the Australian Go-Betweens Show would be tighter ... people that start those [tribute] bands generally play a lot tighter than the bands that they're honouring or copying or whatever".[21] In May the following year the same line-up performed at Les Inrockuptibles's 10th anniversary celebration in Paris.[22]

Forster's next solo album, Warm Nights, was recorded in London in 1996 and produced by Edwyn Collins (The Proclaimers, Vic Godard, A House) – Collins also provided guitar alongside a five-member brass section.[4][15][23] The rhythm section were Pickvance and Thompson. It appeared in September that year and McFarlane described it as "a laid-back collection of summery pop".[15] Raggett found it is "a touch less obviously country-pitched in comparison – more of the deft, understated rock/pop".[23] The album's lead single, "Cryin' Love", included a music video which McFarlane states is "one of the most entertaining film clips for the year".[15] In mid-1997 Forster and McLennan briefly reformed The Go-Betweens for a series of gigs in the UK.[15][24]

In 2000, after both Forster and McLennan had each recorded four solo albums, The Go-Betweens reformed with Pickvance, to create a new studio album, The Friends of Rachel Worth, they were assisted by Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney, Quasi) on drums and backing vocals and Sam Coomes (Quasi) on keyboards.[4][12][25] It was issued in September with Bäumler credited for string arrangements, and production duties shared by Coomes, Forster, McLennan and Weiss.[26] Allmusic's Hal Horowitz praised their "[p]oetic, languid, spoken/sung vocals similar to Lou Reed weave between lovely melodies whose appeal unfolds with repeated listens";[25] however it "sounds more like a combination of two solo albums rather than one from a cohesive unit".[25]The Village Voice's critic, Robert Christgau, described them as "rather than lyric poets, as I once thought, Forster and McLennan are better conceived as short-story writers, with the concreteness and forward motion of voices and music compensating for imagistic technique and low word count".[27] He declared that Foster's tracks "are the catchiest and most fetching tracks on the album, taking up surfing dreams, a fond and funny envoi to Patti Smith, and a life-swapping fable that when you think about it may be a love song after all".[27]

The Go-Betweens line-up of Forster, McLennan, Pickvance and Thompson (he had rejoined in 2001) issued two more studio albums, Bright Yellow Bright Orange (2003) and Oceans Apart (2005),[12] Allmusic's Stewart Mason described Forster as having "a knack for crafty pop songs along with the brooding ballads he contributed to the Go-Betweens' albums, and his solo career has shown a healthy mix of the two styles".[28] Grant McLennan died on 6 May 2006 of a heart attack, aged 48.[29][30]

Robert Forster performing at King George, Cologne (Germany), on 10 November 2017.

In July 2007 Forster resumed his solo music career with live performances over four nights at the Queensland Music Festival. He picked three songs co-written with McLennan, including "Demon Days", which is the last track the pair wrote together, and recorded them alongside his own material for his first solo album in 11 years, The Evangelist, which was released on 26 April 2008 through Yep Roc Records.[12][31] It had been recorded with Pickvance and Thompson at Good Luck Studios, London, from September to November 2007 (except a track, "A Place to Hide Away"). Allmusic's Thom Jurek noted that Forster "has never been this direct before, so unadorned and honest, and yes, vulnerable without the mask of his gift to weave a story, even in first person, and make himself seem a narrator".[32]

Since May 2005 Forster has had a parallel career as a music critic, he began writing for the Australian magazine, The Monthly and its sister publication The Saturday Paper in 2014.[33] Previously he had virtually no print experience, with only a column on hair care for a fanzine in the 1980s to his credit.[34] He was asked by then-editor of The Monthly, Christian Ryan, to write a regular column.[33] Forster later recalled "[m]usic journalism was something that always interested me but only as a reader. I thought about music and I would almost run ideas through my head when I listened to a record or saw a concert, but I never put any of thoughts to paper".[33] On 25 October 2006 Forster won the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing for his columns.[35] In 2009 he collated some of his critiques, written from 2005 to 2009, on international artists The Rolling Stones, Nana Mouskouri, Neil Diamond and Cat Power as well as Australian acts Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Mark Seymour and Paul Kelly.[36] It was published as The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll: Collected Music Writings 2005–09 on Black Inc books.[36]

^"The Go Between Bridge concert". Secret Sounds?. National Library of Australia. 2010. Retrieved 21 June 2013. Poster promoting the concert to celebrate the opening of the Go Between bridge in Brisbane, Queensland, Friday, June 25, 2010. The poster includes a colour image of a vinyl record behind an arch shape, representing the bridge. Text includes details of the event. The performers featured in the concert include Angus & Julia Stone, Robert Forster, Josh Pyke and Bob Evans.